City Council approves settlement after 2017 incident | Baton Rouge

A motion to settle the lawsuit alleging that former East Baton Rouge Mayor pro tempore Scott Wilson suppressed the voices of Baton Rouge’s black residents by removing them from the council chamber failed Wednesday when council members could not agree on a settlement amount.

The City Council was attempting to approve a $30,000 settlement in a lawsuit filed by NAACP Louisiana State Conference President Michael McClanahan and others against Wilson and others over their order barring several black residents from a May 2017 City Council meeting.

Community activist Gary Chambers, McClanahan and former Baton Rouge NAACP chapter president Eugene Collins were among the six residents removed from the council chambers on Wilson’s orders.

Their removal came shortly after they publicly commented on the death of Alton Sterling, who was shot outside the Triple S Food Mart on North Foster Drive on July 5, 2016.

The three men jointly filed a lawsuit in December 2017 alleging that Wilson was “part of a long history of suppression of the voice of black citizens by the Baton Rouge government,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit states that the Baton Rouge government “cannot return to day-to-day business without first finding a solution to respond to the killing of a community member by BRPD officers.”

Chambers said Wednesday he believed the council had “intentionally” delayed approving the agreement.

“My position is that this council, like the last one, refuses to recognize the position of all of its citizens as fair,” he said. “They continue to deny us a settlement, even though a federal judge has sent them back to settle multiple times since our trial.”

Chambers said the original lawsuit was never about money, but about fighting the discrimination he and other black citizens faced at the hands of Wilson and the council at the time.

“I was arrested, dragged out of that meeting and humiliated for speaking into a microphone,” he said. “That doesn’t happen to white citizens in this community. That didn’t happen to white citizens in this community that night; that hasn’t happened to white citizens in this community since. That only happens to black citizens because certain people don’t want to hear certain views, and I think that’s totally undemocratic.”

Last month, Council Member Cleve Dunn Jr. filed an emergency motion to settle the lawsuit. The motion ultimately failed to reach the eight votes needed for formal consideration.

Council members Dwight Hudson and Jen Racca introduced an item to amend the charter on Wednesday that would require the town attorney to approve all settlement-related issues.

The item will be discussed at the next city council meeting on June 26.